#melancholy — Public Fediverse posts

"The Lonely Man on the Cliff," Pelle Swedlund, 1928.

Swedlund (1865-1947) was a Swedish artist known for his landscapes and cityscapes, especially of the Belgian city of Bruges.

Here he's taken us to a real place, Högklint, a dramatic limestone headland on the Swedish island of Gotland. A simple scene of a single figure standing atop the headland serves as a vehicle for the rich colors of the setting sun. The single figure has a downcast head, and the loneliness of the scene, and the setting sun, give it a strong melancholy air.

Swedlund had some success early on as an artist, and later became the curator of Stockholm's Thiel Gallery until just before his death.

From a private collection.

#Art #PelleSwedlund #Symbolism #Gotland #Melancholy #Lonely

"The Lonely Man on the Cliff," Pelle Swedlund, 1928.

Swedlund (1865-1947) was a Swedish artist known for his landscapes and cityscapes, especially of the Belgian city of Bruges.

Here he's taken us to a real place, Högklint, a dramatic limestone headland on the Swedish island of Gotland. A simple scene of a single figure standing atop the headland serves as a vehicle for the rich colors of the setting sun. The single figure has a downcast head, and the loneliness of the scene, and the setting sun, give it a strong melancholy air.

Swedlund had some success early on as an artist, and later became the curator of Stockholm's Thiel Gallery until just before his death.

From a private collection.

#Art #PelleSwedlund #Symbolism #Gotland #Melancholy #Lonely

Free download codes:

Endless Blue - Beautiful Season

"Melancholy trip hop to play as your love walks away"

https://getmusic.fm/l/QJW4bD

#downtempo #triphop #triphop #melancholy #triphop #femalevocalist #goodbye #lovelost #music

Free download codes:

Endless Blue - Beautiful Season

"Melancholy trip hop to play as your love walks away"

https://getmusic.fm/l/QJW4bD

#downtempo #triphop #triphop #melancholy #triphop #femalevocalist #goodbye #lovelost #music

Dusk

i had such grandiose plans
another day to spend
from the bank of my life
to reap the dividend

somewhere i went awry
i lost track of the sun
when i turned around again
the day was almost done

so now i pin my hopes
on the fading light
i watch the creeping shadows
and make plans for the night

August 13, 2015

Dusk

i had such grandiose plans
another day to spend
from the bank of my life
to reap the dividend

somewhere i went awry
i lost track of the sun
when i turned around again
the day was almost done

so now i pin my hopes
on the fading light
i watch the creeping shadows
and make plans for the night

August 13, 2015

So I stayed in the darkness with you

I had this song stuck in my head all weekend and I was struggling to put into words what I was so caught by. Writing this blog post about Kristeva’s Black Sun left me with a much clearer sense of what I’ve been circling around without being able to articulate it. What she’s describing is a shattering loss. A total collapse of meaning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gMq3hRLDD0

The stars, the moon
They have all been blown out
You've left me in the dark
No dawn, no day
I'm always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

There is a loss of the Other, without whom “I was in the darkness so darkness I became”. There is an incorporation of the loss in which she is “always in this twilight in the shadow of your heart”. Through the creative force of signification she maps out her exit from the darkness, acknowledging that when she leaves she will always be marked from the experience: she could find her way back.

I took the stars from my eyes and then I made a map
And knew that somehow I could find my way back
Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too
So I stayed in the darkness with you

But then she hears the Other’s heart beating. They too have become the darkness. The map is forsaken. The exit is abandoned. Instead she prepares to make her home there together. It’s a beautiful sentiment. Or is it? After writing that Kristeva post it feels more like a refusal of mourning masquerading as an act of cosmic solidarity. It’s a peculiarly self-deceptive form of melancholia in which going deeper into the loss feels like it’s getting closer to recovering the lost object.

The fantasy that there is some deeper form of togetherness latent within the traumatic reality of the unravelling. At what point would the imagined togetherness actually arrive? Unless there’s a point where the bottom is reached, where the bedrock of cosmic solidarity is actually located, this is ultimately an act of tragic self-deception. It is one in which refusing to abandon the Other doesn’t give them what it aspires to while also abandoning the self. It made me think back to this passage from Nick Cave in Faith, Hope and Carnage:

But what I want to say is this: this will happen to everybody at some point – a deconstruction of the known self. It may not necessarily be a death, but there will be some kind of devastation. We see it happen to people all the time: a marriage breakdown, or a transgression that has a devastating effect on a person’s life, or health issues, or a betrayal, or a public shaming, or a separation where someone loses their kids, or whatever it is. And it shatters them completely, into a million pieces, and it seems like there is no coming back. It’s over. But in time they put themselves together piece by piece. And the thing is, when they do that, they often find that they are a different person, a changed, more complete, more realised, more clearly drawn person. I think that’s what it is to live, really – to die in a way and to be reborn. And sometimes it can happen many times over, that complex reordering of ourselves.

The choice to stay in the darkness is an embrace of that shattering. But it’s simultaneously a refusal of the piecing together, the healing, the rebirth which follows the shattering. It’s a refusal of life masquerading as an embrace of life.

"The Queen and the Page," Marianne Stokes, 1896.

Austrian-born Stokes (1855-1927) was married to British landscape painter Adrian Stokes, but she herself was, and is, regarded as one of the most important women artists of the Victorian period.

Her artistic education took her all over Europe, and it shows in her work, as she had influences from all over. She had close friendships with other women artists of the time, like Helene Schjerfbeck and Anna Ancher. But when she settled in England with her husband, she fell under the spell of the Pre-Raphaelites.

This depicts a scene from a medieval story of an elderly king married to a young queen, who is loved by her page, but they both know it's doomed and will end in both their deaths. You can see the melancholy in their poses....the queen knowing it's doomed, and the page looking at her in hopeless adoration. The scroll at the top describes it in German.

Such a romantic and tragic tale was ideal for the Pre-Raphaelites, and Stokes does it justice.

From a private collection.

#Art #MarianneStokes #PreRaphaelites #WomenArtists #WomenInArt #Melancholy #Herstory

"The Queen and the Page," Marianne Stokes, 1896.

Austrian-born Stokes (1855-1927) was married to British landscape painter Adrian Stokes, but she herself was, and is, regarded as one of the most important women artists of the Victorian period.

Her artistic education took her all over Europe, and it shows in her work, as she had influences from all over. She had close friendships with other women artists of the time, like Helene Schjerfbeck and Anna Ancher. But when she settled in England with her husband, she fell under the spell of the Pre-Raphaelites.

This depicts a scene from a medieval story of an elderly king married to a young queen, who is loved by her page, but they both know it's doomed and will end in both their deaths. You can see the melancholy in their poses....the queen knowing it's doomed, and the page looking at her in hopeless adoration. The scroll at the top describes it in German.

Such a romantic and tragic tale was ideal for the Pre-Raphaelites, and Stokes does it justice.

From a private collection.

#Art #MarianneStokes #PreRaphaelites #WomenArtists #WomenInArt #Melancholy #Herstory

✮ The Crash Out ✮ 

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5 #AnalogPhotography #Analogue #FilmPhotography #FilmIsNotDead #BelieveInFilm #ShootFilm #MediumFormat #6x6 #FilmIsBetter #Grain #Analog #SquareFormat #ContemplativePhotography #Monochrome #BlackAndWhite #BWPhotography #Nostalgia #Solitude #ParkAlley #BareTrees #WinterScene #Melancholy #QuietPlace #...

@photography

#Places #Trees

Daily diary on Mastodon
🔗 https://pixelfed.social/p/piotrk/989559981716585333

5 #AnalogPhotography #Analogue #FilmPhotography #FilmIsNotDead #BelieveInFilm #ShootFilm #MediumFormat #6x6 #FilmIsBetter #Grain #Analog #SquareFormat #ContemplativePhotography #Monochrome #BlackAndWhite #BWPhotography #Nostalgia #Solitude #ParkAlley #BareTrees #WinterScene #Melancholy #QuietPlace #...

@photography

#Places #Trees

Daily diary on Mastodon
🔗 https://pixelfed.social/p/piotrk/989559981716585333

✮ Long Way Down ✮

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✮ A Night in New York ✮

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Free download codes:

Erythrina - Monolithica Aeternum / Terraqueous

"Epic Chillwave"

https://getmusic.fm/l/59haDU

#ambient #electronic #synthwave #epic #melodic #melancholy #music

Free download codes:

Erythrina - Monolithica Aeternum / Terraqueous

"Epic Chillwave"

https://getmusic.fm/l/59haDU

#ambient #electronic #synthwave #epic #melodic #melancholy #music

Culdesac

down here on the path 
beside the railroad tracks 
with the freight train 
slowly going by 
the urge to hop on one 
of the gravel laden cars 
and let it take me 
far away from here 
is almost overpowering

as usual i do not 
make the leap and 
later i find myself 
walking past the old man 
with a broom sweeping 
the street to where the path 
turns back upon itself 
out past the little girl 
on her mama's back 
who says hi 

i try to smile in return 
but all i can think about 
is how did i ever get so lost

July 9, 2015

Culdesac

down here on the path 
beside the railroad tracks 
with the freight train 
slowly going by 
the urge to hop on one 
of the gravel laden cars 
and let it take me 
far away from here 
is almost overpowering

as usual i do not 
make the leap and 
later i find myself 
walking past the old man 
with a broom sweeping 
the street to where the path 
turns back upon itself 
out past the little girl 
on her mama's back 
who says hi 

i try to smile in return 
but all i can think about 
is how did i ever get so lost

July 9, 2015

Engraving from Johannes Faulhaber’s <i>Newe geometrische vnd perspektiuische Inuentiones</i> (1610), showing Platonic solids hanging in a workshop. (1610), from Newe geometrische vnd perspektiuische Inuentiones
.

Source: New York Public Library

https://pdimagearchive.org/images/a78a602c-8971-4b24-af2c-0a3bce64ae3c

#mathematics #globes #cartography #exploration #perspective #euclid #polyhedra #geometry #melancholy #art #publicdomain

Engraving from Johannes Faulhaber’s <i>Newe geometrische vnd perspektiuische Inuentiones</i> (1610), showing Platonic solids hanging in a workshop. (1610), from Newe geometrische vnd perspektiuische Inuentiones
.

Source: New York Public Library

https://pdimagearchive.org/images/a78a602c-8971-4b24-af2c-0a3bce64ae3c

#mathematics #globes #cartography #exploration #perspective #euclid #polyhedra #geometry #melancholy #art #publicdomain

Two Hundred Fifty Years of What, and What For?

https://bolesblogs.com/2026/07/04/two-hundred-fifty-years-of-what-and-what-for/

Two Hundred Fifty Years of What, and What For?

https://bolesblogs.com/2026/07/04/two-hundred-fifty-years-of-what-and-what-for/

The Ache

The ache dullens not

Despite the passing hours

It remains fresh as ever

It is happy to exist

Not demanding an end

As if it too has a right to exist

Like any other thing in this world.

Ask not what the ache is about’

It is at once about everything

And at once about nothing

The kind of ache that exists

In a breast far from its origins.

There’s an old voice in my head that’s holding me back. Well, tell her that I miss our little talks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F2glz-eoAM

There's an old voice in my head
That's holding me back
Well, tell her that I miss our little talks

From Mari Ruti’s The Call of Character pg 150:

In other words, if it is sometimes hard to discard the past because the pain of this past haunts our present, it can also be hard to give up a past that has been particularly rewarding; it can be hard to surrender what has brought a great deal of satisfaction. Yet if we are to give fresh editions of ourselves a chance, we must find a way of doing so. Life asks us to mourn each passing incarnation of the self. This amounts to a lifetime of mourning. There will always be regrets and misgivings. We tend to get nostalgic about parts of our past that made us happy. And we tend to grieve the loss of certain opportunities: we lament having made this choice rather than that, of having taken this turn rather than that. But most of all, we mourn those aspects of ourselves that we are forced to renounce because they have become redundant. Sometimes our mourning is so intense that we cannot bring it to a timely conclusion but instead form melancholy attachments to dimensions of ourselves that are largely obsolete.

In the Darkness, I mend

https://personalblog5177.wordpress.com/2026/06/24/in-the-darkness-i-mend/

In the Darkness, I mend

https://personalblog5177.wordpress.com/2026/06/24/in-the-darkness-i-mend/

"Was ist ein Herz ohne Gebrauchsspuren schon wert?" -- Anett Louisan

https://tidal.com/track/532032570/u
https://youtu.be/pbL-Drc7uYE
#music #melancholy

"Was ist ein Herz ohne Gebrauchsspuren schon wert?" -- Anett Louisan

https://tidal.com/track/532032570/u
https://youtu.be/pbL-Drc7uYE
#music #melancholy

North: ROOTS

pull marshmallow #roots
summer's natural sugar
winter's hot cocoa

South: MELANCHOLY

the #melancholy
echoes of an empty house
snow falls quietly

#dailyhaikuprompt #haiku #poetry #writing #writingcommunity

North: ROOTS

pull marshmallow #roots
summer's natural sugar
winter's hot cocoa

South: MELANCHOLY

the #melancholy
echoes of an empty house
snow falls quietly

#dailyhaikuprompt #haiku #poetry #writing #writingcommunity

Melencolia I (1514) by Albrecht Dürer.

Source: Rijksmuseum

Available to buy as a print.

https://pdimagearchive.org/images/c341bbfa-8e8f-459c-92cc-e4e8b66af856

#dogs #artists #mystery #depression #melancholy #melancholia #art #publicdomain